The first respirators--First-aid devices--the smoke helmet--Anti-gas
sprayers--Their use and delicacy--The English chemists set to
work--The task of training the whole army.
There is no need to dwell on the execration with which the use of gas
was met by the whole civilised world, and I will merely try to recount
how it was taken by the men in the trenches.
The British Tommy is a difficult man to terrify, and the moral effect
on the men, though quite unprotected, was remarkably small considering
the terrors of the game. For two or three days all we heard about were
the things we should do in the event of being similarly attacked. It
appeared that great chemists from England had immediately taken up the
question of providing efficient respirators, and until they came out
were advising people as to emergency measures. Some of these methods
seemed to us very funny. We were told, for example, that a respirator
could “easily” be made by knocking the bottom off a bottle, filling the
bottle with earth, and then learning to breathe with the neck of the
bottle stuck in the mouth. The breath was to be taken in through the
bottle and let out through the nose; but as bottles were scarce and few
of them survived the attempt to get the bottom broken off there was not
much doing.
However, we learned that handkerchiefs filled with earth and kept moist
would keep some of the gas out, and by the time the first novelty had
worn off we were receiving private respirators from England. These
had all been made in response to an appeal by Lord Kitchener to the
women of England to make respirators for the troops out of cotton wool
wrapped up in muslin or veiling. The result of this was that the War
Office was absolutely swamped with millions of these respirators within
a few days, and most fellows in the trenches had one or two sent out by
post straightaway.
Besides these, arrangements were made by the various divisions for
respirators to be made in towns behind the lines; and the government
factories in England got to work to turn out a simple type of
respirator which had been devised by the English chemists as the
quickest to make and the simplest to use. The result was that within
about one month we had four or five different kinds of respirators
issued to us. Most of these were simple pads of either cotton wool or
cotton waste. The earlier ones were soaked in washing-soda solution,
and the later ones were moistened with a special solution consisting
of ordinary photographic hypo and washing soda mixed with a little
glycerin.
One type that we had for a week or two in the trenches consisted of
the usual pad of cotton waste together with a small wad of the same
material which was kept separate. The respirators were stored in boxes
let into the paradoses, or rear walls of the trenches. On the alarm
being given each man in the trench made a dive for a respirator,
stuffed the wad into his mouth as a first protection, and then bound
the pad round his mouth and nose, the wad being afterward taken out of
his mouth and stuffed round his nose so as to make a tight fit.
These practices were popular for once or twice, but when it began to
be realised that the wads were not always used by the same man the
novelty waned. We thought we were getting pretty smart at it when we
could get every man in the trench fully protected--that is, with the
tapes tied--in forty seconds from the word “Go.”
Later on we had the official “black-veiling respirator,” which was
issued to all the British troops and which went through two or three of
the earlier attacks as the chief protection.
It was from one of these attacks delivered in the salient again, on the
twenty-fourth of May, that the first benefits of good training in the
use of the respirator were seen. One of the regiments which had been
on the flank of the first attack and had seen the effects of the gas
and what it really meant had taken the training very seriously, and
the officers had insured that every man had a respirator, kept it in
good condition, and knew how to use it in the quickest possible time
should occasion rise. Other regiments were not so good, and it was just
this training or lack of it that made all the difference between heavy
casualties and light casualties in subsequent attacks.
On the twenty-fourth of May the regiment mentioned above happened to
be in the very thickest part of the cloud, and though the battalion
on either side of it suffered serious losses they themselves came off
almost scot-free. Instances of losses from insufficient education in
the use of the respirator were numerous on this occasion. A lot of
men took their respirators off in the middle of the attack in order
to wet them with solution again; and as they did not wring them out
sufficiently the respirators were difficult to breathe through and the
men thought they were being gassed and repeated the dose--the result
being that they could not draw air through the sodden cotton waste, and
they were gassed either from pulling off the respirators altogether or
from the air coming in at the side.
One very bad instance was quoted by a medical officer at an advanced
dressing station which was taking in gas cases as they came down from
the line. Two or three men from one battalion came in pretty badly
gassed, but still able to walk. The M. O. asked them if they had
respirators issued to them. They said “Yes.”
“Well, why didn’t you put them on?”
They said: “We did put them on; we’ve got them on now.”
And so they had--strapped across their chests!
At that time respirators were generally carried by the men tied round
their caps, and in some cases could not be removed in time; and the
May twenty-fourth attack made it apparent that the respirators should
be carried in a position ready for immediate use. For this purpose a
waterproof cover was provided and the respirator kept in a small pocket
inserted into the jacket, or else in a pouch slung over the shoulder.
The other bad feature about the preparations was the arrangement for
dipping the respirators in solution in the trenches, as referred to
above. During the attack a lot of the men dipped their respirators in
water; which of course washed the chemicals out of the respirators and
made them ineffectual much sooner than they should have been. But all
of these matters were remedied before another gas attack was made.
After the first emergency respirator had been issued every effort was
made to devise a more effective form of protection than that given by
the cotton-wool pads, in expectation of a recurrence of German attacks.
As a matter of fact there were no attacks between the beginning of June
and December, 1915, because the wind was unfavourable to the Germans.
This was another point that they had apparently overlooked, because on
investigation we found that the prevailing winds in Flanders blew from
west to east, and that about three-quarters of the total winds were in
our favour and against the Germans.
The long interval of the summer of 1915 gave us a splendid opportunity
to develop the protection against gas which had been commenced in the
spring while attacks were still being made. The most important of
these developments were the invention of the celebrated “smoke helmet”
and the use of sprayers for the removing of gas from the trenches. We
also found out the exact value of certain other devices and methods
which had been suggested for combating the gas clouds, and a lot of
impossible ideas were consequently turned down.
The latter might be discussed first of all. One suggestion which was
made and believed in by most people at various times--including the
Germans themselves--was that fires built in the trenches or on the
parapet would cause such an upward draft as to lift up the gas cloud
and carry it safely over our heads. Experiments showed, however, that
this idea was absolutely false, because though an upward draft was
certainly formed the incoming air carried with it just as much gas from
the surrounding atmosphere, and nothing was gained by it. It was a long
time before the Germans tumbled to this, and even many months later
their own instructions on defence against gas included statements that
showed their reliance on this procedure.
One suggestion which actually reached the point of being acted on was
that the gas cloud could be dispersed by an explosion, and for this
purpose we were provided with wooden boxes filled with black powder and
with fuses attached, which we were supposed to light at the crucial
moment and throw into an advancing cloud. This heroic procedure was
never actually made use of, however, because experiments in the
meantime again showed that such explosions had very little effect on a
cloud of gas.
Two suggestions which really did turn out to be winners were those
referred to previously--the smoke helmet and the Vermorel sprayer for
clearing the trenches.
The idea for a respirator in the form of a helmet to go right over
the head is stated to have originated from an idea of a sergeant of
the Canadians who was gassed at Ypres, who stated that he had seen
some of the Germans through the gas cloud with things that looked like
flour bags pulled over their heads. It was thought that something of
this kind could actually be made use of, and experiments showed that
it was really a practical idea, because breathing is done through a
very big surface and not only through the chemicals directly in front
of the mouth and nose, as in the case of the respirator. By having
a big surface it is possible to have thinner material and there is,
therefore, less resistance to breathing. All that is required is to
tuck the helmet down inside the jacket and button the latter tightly
round it at the neck, and if this is done there is little possibility
of gas leaking in. As a matter of fact there is no evidence that the
Germans ever did use anything of the kind.
The first types of smoke helmet were made of flannel and had a window
for seeing through which was made of mica or celluloid. The helmets
were soaked in the same kind of solution--hypo, carbonate of soda
and glycerin--that had been employed for the respirators. Helmets of
this kind were capable of standing up against really considerable
concentrations of chlorine, and they were quickly recognised both by
the troops and by experts as being a very big improvement on the old
respirator.
These helmets were made and issued to the troops as quickly as
possible and a few of them were actually used in the attack of May
twenty-fourth. Men unpracticed in their use were apt to find them hot
and stuffy, and, not realising that the feeling wears off, were often
inclined to think that they were being suffocated or gassed. As a
matter of fact well-drilled men could do almost anything while wearing
the helmet, the chief difficulty being that of limited vision. After
wearing the helmet for a short time the celluloid window got clouded
over from the moisture in the breath, but this could easily be remedied
by wiping it on the forehead. In many cases also the windows got
cracked or broken from the rough treatment they were bound to meet in
trenches, and this was a constant danger until men learned how to fold
the helmet properly so as to protect the celluloid and to place a small
sheet of cardboard or thin wood over the window before folding.
The sprayers previously mentioned were originally suggested for use
against the gas cloud itself, the idea being that chemicals should be
sprayed at the cloud so as to neutralise the poisonous gas and thereby
purify the air. Nearly everybody with even a nodding acquaintance with
chemistry wrote in suggesting ammonia for this purpose, oblivious of
the fact that the chemical reaction between chlorine and ammonia in
these circumstances produces a dense cloud which is most irritating to
the eyes and throat, and that this together with the excess of ammonia
would be almost as bad as the original gas.
In any case it is impossible to deal with the gas cloud by spraying,
because of the enormous amount of chemicals and apparatus that would
be required to neutralise the attack. A cloud of chlorine from one
thousand cylinders, for example, would require more than forty tons of
the strongest ammonia solution obtainable to kill all the gas, even if
none of the spray were lost in the ground. Besides this the spraying
might have to be continued for hours, some of the attacks having lasted
intermittently for more than three hours.
It was quickly seen that this was an utter impossibility, but
experiments showed that a spray of the hypo solution was quite capable
of removing what remained of the gas cloud out of trenches and shell
holes and from dugouts into which the gas had penetrated. This of
course applied only to chlorine. Arrangements were therefore made for
supplying a large number of these sprayers, which are exactly the same
as those used for spraying fruit trees and potatoes with fungicides,
and men were specially trained in their use so that they could be
employed after an attack was over. These men were officially known as
the “Vermorel sprayer men,” and were popularly supposed to preface all
their operations with the words “Let us spray.”
The solution to fill the sprayers was kept in all the trenches in
corked rum jars, and there were many amusing incidents rising out
of the dual purpose to which these revered vessels were put. It is
stated that a certain battalion on going into the line for the first
time saw these rum jars safely ensconced in niches in the parapet and
immediately thought that they contained the rum ration concerning
which they had heard so much before they came out. Some of the more
adventurous ones surreptitiously tried out the supposed rum and drank a
few mouthfuls of the nauseous liquid before discovering their mistake.
The real joke lay in the fact that even after they realised that the
liquid was not rum they continued to drink it, and by the time they
finished their two days’ tour of instruction there was not a drop of
Vermorel sprayer solution left in any of the trenches.
The sprayers were somewhat delicate pieces of apparatus to keep in good
condition in the trenches, and were apt to get crusted with mud and
out of order unless they were well looked after. Like everything else
connected with the defence against gas, their condition in the trenches
varied with different regiments according as they were well trained and
disciplined or otherwise, but as a rule the sprayers were well enough
looked after, and proved extraordinarily useful on many occasions after
their first appearance in the line.
As stated before, the long interval of the summer and autumn of 1915
gave the chemists and the army plenty of opportunity for thinking about
the gas question, developing organisation and methods to meet attacks
in the future, and making arrangements for the training of the troops
so that they should be thoroughly prepared when the next attack should
arrive.
One of the most important things that was done was to start a big field
laboratory for dealing with questions of gas warfare. And as it had
already been realised that the whole basis of defence against gas was
going to lie in the hands of the troops themselves by increasing their
steadiness, developing their discipline, and generally accustoming
them to the idea that gas was now an ordinary method of warfare,
chemists and instructors were appointed for attachment to each of the
British armies.
These men were all chosen from the line. For the most part they were
infantry officers who could realise the real needs and limitations of
the troops, but they were picked in each instance because they had, at
any rate, some chemical knowledge and could translate into practice
for the benefit of the troops various chemical measures which had been
adopted for the latter’s safety. Their first chief job was to see that
respirators and smoke helmets were issued in sufficient number; to see
that they were in good condition; and then to arrange for the training
of all the troops in the army in their use. This was a heroic task, to
be accomplished in as short a time as possible, but by dint of speaking
to large bodies of officers and men at the same time it was so far
completed that all ranks were given practical instruction in the use of
the helmet.
When it is realised that each of these officers had to deal with at
least one hundred thousand troops it will be seen that it was no
mean feat that was accomplished. What was started then has never been
completely accomplished, partly because of the continual development of
gas warfare and partly because it is a matter of education--which is
always slow--but very largely also because of the continually changing
personnel and the enormous numbers of men that have had to be trained.